Goblin Squad Member
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Is the environment going to be hostile or beneficial? I'm hoping that storms will knock down trees, earthquakes will reveal buried minerals, that fires can be set to burn down farms. It would be nice to have supernatural weather, too. Fog that causes crops to grow more rapidly, storms that raise the dead, stuff like that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Early on count on zero weather (or at least zero bad weather). I expect it to be sunny and 83 degrees (F) all day, and 58 at night. (That's 28 high, 14 low for you Celsius types).
But I would like to see rain at appropriate times, flooding occasionally, fog, hail....but ways to fight the flood, boons from rain, muddy puddles, clearing fog as the temperature rises. Big snow blanketing the area, and footprints making skulking difficult.
Tough stuff to implement with so much else going on, but worth it over time.
Setting fires, lightning strikes causing forest fires, torching buildings during a battle....those mechanics might be too tough for a long while.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I know that the moon won't even have phases for a while, so I would expect you're right. I hope that they will implement the mechanics, eventually, though, especially if they let us have underground structures. A Settlement that can only be reached through a series of caverns that are occasionally submerged by flood waters would be exciting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are a few weather related spells. Hard to implement, but artifacts could do stuff, Druids could do some stuff, high level wizard spells can summon storms and lightning. If done well big flashes of lightning tearing through the sky demolishing structures and throwing building stones through eh air would be very dramatic indeed!
As a druid, I find the idea that we'd be able to bring down entire farms at higher levels quite interesting. If someone for some reason decided a settlement needed to be taught a lesson, it would be a good thing to know.
Mother is calling.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you start hoping for weather extreme's, you might want to be careful what you wish for.
Weather extremes will not only be varied based on latitude...but also upon the elevation. So that really cool instanced Dungeon waaaayy up there may very well get you frost bite if you're not careful.
If I was going to have weather extremes (ie. floods, hurricanes, blizzards etc.) they would be part of an escalation cyle. The Orc's attack after a huge deluge of rain because defenses will be weakened and have slower response times.
To make weather extremes a variable would be ill advised at best.
It's alot easier to program these incident's as a "One-time" shot instead of a programmed-in variable weather cycle with ebbs and flows.
Many years ago when I lived in Deutschland, a friend and I took the basic random weather generation tables in AD&D and made a program in basic where you could enter the latitude, elevation, starting month, and time period...and it would generate an actual weather pattern for the prescribed period of time. It was great for game sessions with a known (or roughly known) period of time. Because weather (the great untouched canvas by the majority of GM's) was filled out for you in a way that made some semblance of sense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Slightly off-topic, but I'd love to see a plague escalation event. WoW had one by accident (corrupted blood incident) and it was hugely popular from what I read (I just barely missed out on it back in the day).
Back on topic, I have to say I love the idea of this thread! I imagine some form of seasonal variation would probably be the first thing implemented before proper weather could be included.
A Control Weather spell would become really interesting if that occurred ...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Slightly off-topic, but I'd love to see a plague escalation event. WoW had one by accident (corrupted blood incident) and it was hugely popular from what I read (I just barely missed out on it back in the day).
Back on topic, I have to say I love the idea of this thread! I imagine some form of seasonal variation would probably be the first thing implemented before proper weather could be included.
A Control Weather spell would become really interesting if that occurred ...
I wouldn't say the plauge event in WoW was hugely popular, It was really cool from an outsiders perspective, and cool in concept in the "oh wow, so this sort of thing really can happen in an MMO". but it also rendered the game virtually unplayable until it was cleaned up. (litterally anyone under level 50... died instantly if they got anywhere near any infected players or NPCs). Of course with balancing and planning, a fun version of such that is actually beneficial to the game, would absolutely be awesome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Slightly off-topic, but I'd love to see a plague escalation event. WoW had one by accident (corrupted blood incident) and it was hugely popular from what I read (I just barely missed out on it back in the day).
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I remember that, and it did add a good piece of realism in the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I could see a plague, or an "Angel of Death" event (a powerful curse against an opposing settlement or an escalation) where a powerful group of Necromancers summon a moving green cloud of "Raise Dead" that creeps into town like the gloom in the Ten Commandments. Players could see it coming and be powerless to stop it, only able to prepare a counterattack against its awesome power to create an Army of undead warriors from the very graveyard of the settlement to be attacked.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm all for weather and extreme extreme weather and natural disasters and even plagues. If only because it wold probably reduce the number of players running around in their underwear. Also for the added realism and depth.
Korvak's example of risking frostbite to get to a high altitude dungeon seems like good thing to me. It adds to the challenge, makes getting there more special, and makes you select your gear or spells more carefully. It would provide gameplay reasons to not just wear the statistically superior armor or prepare the most DPS dealing spells.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've heard of the corrupted blood plague, but I didn't realize it was so lethal. I wonder if any mean-spirited level 50+ characters deliberately brought it to newbie zones to watch everyone die.
By all accounts, yes they did. Others worked against it.
Now in PFO with a much shallower power curve than WoW you can have it so that a single 'tick' of the disease isn't 1-shotting low level characters. Corrupted blood was never designed as an escalation event and was meant to be a challenge for level 60 (max at the time) raiders. Tone it down for PFO and you have something which can be debilitating but not lethal to everyone.
That opens up new avenues of warfare and maybe assassination ...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking at the region, don't thick there would be massive earthquakes besides the small very localized ones many years to come.
Though extra ordinary bad rainy weather is an possibility of floods along the river, and of course a plague every few years would be something to shake up the settlements nicely.
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I would like to explore a flooded dungeon... sounds awesome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If we aren't getting dark at night , the other visual effects of weather like snow fog and rain are likewise ... up in the air ;p
Here's the one thing that means that darkness isn't worth building into a game design:
Players can easily run software that will render the surrounding areas as if lit. If a game actually shipped with "meaningful darkness", a player-built patch to remove it would be available within hours. Then the only people who would "suffer" from darkness would be the ones who are unwilling to "cheat", and the "cheaters" would have a huge advantage.
Nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero could be done to stop this from happening. (Look up what happened when people figured out you could make the walls transparent in iD games if you're interested in the cat & mouse between developers and those wiling to cheat).
Did you know that World of Warcraft runs a hidden process on your machine that is designed to detect this kind of cheating? It's called "Warden" (you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29
And even with this, people still hack the heck out of the WoW client.
Ask yourself if you really want Goblinworks to be that creepy, all for the un-achievable goal of making people have to worry about torches, lanterns and light spells.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+1, I support most of these things...a variable and sometimes hostile environment makes the world seem much for alive and requires the community/sub-communities to pull together to "combat" what is normally the mundane.
These events would also give scrying an important purpose in game...player behaviour might not be predictable, but these natural ones could be. Being able to plan for these events because you had magical foresight (assuming you have a scrying facility built and staffed of course) could provide bonuses to overcoming it. Similarly, being able to foretell these events could give prepared combatants a tactical advantage. Imagine an invading force showing up with a hurricane (or other natural event storm) in tow...and each member of the invading force is equipped with defense from the elements magic...
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Goblin Squad Member
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We could have an "Evil in the Woods" event that happens in forested areas, where the sunlight is cut down (a lot), creepy things get bigger and meaner, has undead roaming,
respawn time takes many times longer, and you have evil shadows (shadowy copies) of PCs who are in the woods (or have died once in the woods).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Looking at the region, don't thick there would be massive earthquakes besides the small very localized ones many years to come.
Though extra ordinary bad rainy weather is an possibility of floods along the river, and of course a plague every few years would be something to shake up the settlements nicely.
Annual flooding along the West Sellen River would be a cool nod to real-world history, but it would also take a lot of work to program. I guess that flood waters could be an escalation of sorts, with floodwaters spreading out from the river, then receding. Settlements and POIs without dikes or floodwalls would take some structural damage, but after the waters recede, the local farms and plant-based gathering sites could have a temporary boost in productivity.
Even though I like this idea, my guess is that it wouldn't count as part of the Minimum Viable Product for EE, and waiting a couple of years to see it happen would be fine with me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@KarlBob: I think that's a brilliant suggestion: A choice to make for such "river plains" dwellers. Also like how in EVE some communities have very little awareness of what others are doing due to geographical/spatial separation being so meaningful.
Seeing as some of these related subjects could be pencilled in for crowdforging, I'd like to rephrase them in a way they could be implemented:
1/ Darkness:
The limitations of graphically -> functionally affecting players' eyeballs is unworkable as described above. So instead:
A: Have different mob cycles/escalation/mob spawns on works by players in the dark: Perhaps worse/more of them. Supernatural mob types.
B: If characters (as opposed to players) have a "see in the dark" skill that might give them a buff or at least remove a debuff for the dark.
2/ Fog:
A: See B above. Alternatively a movement correction. or you might be spawned randomly somewhere in the mist to mess around with your character while in fog?
3/ Weather:
A: If rain and seasonal variation could affect crop growth, animal breeding seasons. As well as aesthetically diverse and pleasing effects. B: Windier areas (elevation/area) might have the option to build "mills" to power the production of eg bread or water powered mills by rivers for forging metals?
4/ Blizzard/Snow/Freezing Temperatures:
A: Especially high altitude: Require warm-clothes otherwise players lose health and eventually die, movement rate slows etc: So carrying capacity requires warm-clothes. Severe conditions may just outright kill characters faster. This could be a way for armies to really suffer casualties if marcing during Winter in snow-prone lands for a whopping eg of applicability. Ie plan your campaigns during Spring/Summer! Opens up a whole new section of the clothes industry too: Fine furs, trapping.
B: Reduces food production, a snap freeze may ruin the vine-yards causing prices to rocket that year or that area. Could also introduce in snowier areas food production that lasts longer in storage such as cured/salted meats etc and using ice to store food as well. Dunno if there will be an ice/salt economy ever?!
C: May block roads also.
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Goblin Squad Member
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5/ Poisonous plants and beasties: I'd be happy if there were some extremely toxic/venomous species that could kill a character in minutes if unlucky and untreated. These are small dangers that would make "rangering" out in the real wilderness very dangerous.
6/ To build on flooding, drowning, almost guranteed if in heavy/medium armour and caught in the water - certainly a few minutes for the player to save themselves but less chance if dropping like a rock in heavy armour into deep/strong currents of water. Or certainly calculate encumbrance.
... Hostile!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Annual flooding along the West Sellen River would be a cool nod to real-world history, but it would also take a lot of work to program. I guess that flood waters could be an escalation of sorts, with floodwaters spreading out from the river, then receding. Settlements and POIs without dikes or floodwalls would take some structural damage, but after the waters recede, the local farms and plant-based gathering sites could have a temporary boost in productivity.
Even though I like this idea, my guess is that it wouldn't count as part of the Minimum Viable Product for EE, and waiting a couple of years to see it happen would be fine with me.
Or there could be a monster escalation related to the flooding - something like a dragon turtle or out of control water elementals - which needs to be eliminated to bring the farms along the river back into cultivation.